Dome-shaped Buddhist shrine / 2-7-26 / Woolen leggings, as worn by W.W. I soldiers / Reptile with a colorful name / Airbnb inclusion, usually / The Hornets, on a scoreboard / Singer with the 2016 Grammy-winning soul ballad "Cranes in the Sky" / "OMG"-evoking deed / Seldom-used PC key / Former e-book devices, until 2014 / Michael who plays Allan in "Barbie" / One of Oberon's subjects

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: STUPA (34A: Dome-shaped Buddhist shrine) —

In Buddhism, a stupa (Sanskrit: स्तूप, lit. 'heap', IAST: stūpa) is a domed hemispherical structure containing several types of sacred relics, including images, statues, metals, and śarīra—the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns. It is used as a place of pilgrimage and meditation.

Walking around a stupa in a clockwise direction, known as pradakhshina, has been an important ritual and devotional practice in Buddhism since the earliest times, and stupas always have a pradakhshina path around them. The original South Asian form is a large solid dome above a tholobate, or drum, with vertical sides, which usually sits on a square base. There is no access to the inside of the structure. In large stupas, there may be walkways for circumambulation on top of the base as well as on the ground below it. Large stupas have, or had, vedikā railings outside the path around the base, often highly decorated with sculpture, especially at the torana gateways, of which there are usually four. At the top of the dome is a thin, vertical element, with one or more horizontal discs spreading from it. These were chatras, symbolic umbrellas, and have not survived, if not restored. The Great Stupa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, is the most famous and best-preserved early stupa in India. (wikipedia)

• • •

OK, don't get me wrong, I appreciated the challenge. This one definitely put up a fight, something late-week puzzles don't seem to do that much these days, and I'm grateful. I just wish the grid itself were more ... pleasing, somehow. Some of the answers were, uh, questionable (a few ODDITYs, for sure), and so many of the clues just felt off or inapt—designed for misdirection, but perhaps ... overdesigned. A sharpshooter needs ... some kind of ACUITY, sure, but just ... ACUITY? I dunno. Not all (or even most?) ODDITYs are "treasures" (16A: Curio shop treasure). "GOD NO!" is a flat-out, dead-certain response to a question, not something you say when you see something fishy or unbelievable (14D: "That can't possibly be right!"). "Do you want to see the newest Marvel movie?" "GOD NO!" That's how that works. Like, "are you f***ing kidding me, absolutely not!" Whereas "That can't possibly be right!" is something you'd say if you were astonished by something that might, in fact, be true. I guess you could do a line reading wherein you make your voice more horrified, and put a little pause (audible comma) between "GOD" and "NO," but if you're alarmed like that, you'd probably start with "Oh." There's something tin-eared about this, and many other clues. And some of the answers as well. TOENAIL SCISSORS!? Do you all not use TOENAIL CLIPPERS? Imagining cutting my toenails with actual scissors is freaking me out. I don't doubt such things exist, but ... I don't doubt the ROSY BOA exists either, but what the hell is that? Do PUTTEES exist? Does an END key? I guess I believe you, but I can't really picture them. Stacking the grid with ODDITYs isn't the most entertaining way to achieve difficulty, and doesn't make for a terribly exciting experience overall. 

I think the thing I resent the most today, though, is the clue on A SPOT—a horrible partial that you'd think you'd want to make relatively unambiguous so that the solver could solve it quickly and move on. No need to have the solver dwelling on the garbage. Today, however, this answer—possibly the worst thing in the grid, from a pure "how good is this single piece of fill?" standpoint—was the thing that held me up the longest, the answer I spent most time with, and all because of the deliberately ambiguous clue (8D: "Save me ___!"). Why make me spend so much time with the worst you have to offer? Of course I wrote in "Save me A SEAT!" because that is the more likely answer, so much more likely that that is exactly how "A SEAT" has been clued in the past—three times! Whereas "A SPOT" has never been clued this way. It tends to be clued in much clearer ways, like ["You missed ___!"] or [In ___ (having difficulty)]. It's been fourteen glorious years since "A SPOT" has appeared at all, but that era is now over. Sigh. It's weird how much one wrong (and very right-seeming) answer can hold up solving progress. Add "A SEAT" to "ESC" (instead of the mysterious "END"), and you've got me all gummed up in the top. Specifically, I could not parse GENUS AND SPECIES at all—and again, the answer itself is not pleasing. I know GENUS and SPECIES but GENUS AND SPECIES? GOD NO. I do not know or recognize GENUS AND SPECIES as a standalone phrase. And I was so happy to see Pauline KAEL ... really thought she was gonna blow the puzzle open for me (she got me WAFFLE MAKER!). But alas, no. I was ground down by ... "A SPOT." Bah. 

The stack across the middle is solid enough. I could do without a MISSILE TEST in my grid, but GOOD SPELLER is OK. Despite the presence of the mysterious, made-up-sounding ROSY BOA (a debut, no surprise there), I think the center is the strongest part of the grid. The top is OK (GENUS AND SPECIES aside). The bottom, oof, no. Hard to think of a long answer more singularly unappealing than SONY READERS. A long bygone e-reader that I've never heard of ... in the plural ... why? And we've been over TOENAIL SCISSORS (CLIPPERS fits perfectly, by the way, if you didn't discover that fact for yourself). As a baseball fan for whom baseball season will start (mentally) as soon as the Super Bowl concludes on Sunday, I enjoyed RETIRE THE SIDE (46A: What a pitcher tries to do), though I imagine it won't be as pleasing to non-sports fans (just as I enjoyed SOLANGE (17A: Singer with the 2016 Grammy-winning soul ballad "Cranes in the Sky") but imagine many solvers will greet her appearance here with a "huh?"—this is her sixth NYTXW appearance, though, you should probably have her name committed to memory by now).

Bullets:

• 24A: Airbnb inclusion, usually (LINEN) — I mean, sure, but is that word actually used in the Airbnb listing? LINEN? I had the "L" but still struggled with this clue. 
• 21A: Cause for getting stuck (MIRE) — Had the "M," wanted MIRE, held back because MUCK seemed possible. 
• 30D: Woolen leggings, as worn by W.W. I soldiers (PUTTEES) — gonna go out on a limb and say the STUPA / PUTTEES crossing is gonna trip some solvers up. Those are both very specialized, foreign, non-everyday terms, crossing at a vowel. Seems dicey. I completely forgot that STUPA was a thing, and was so happy that some part of me dimly but confidently remembered that PUTTEES were a thing (though if you'd asked me to explain what kind of thing before I solved this puzzle, I would not have been able to help you). I associate PUTTEES with British soldiers in India. Turns out they were worn by all kinds of people and date from antiquity, but I think of British India. Why? Hang on ... Yeah, here we go: the word derives from the Hindi word for "bandage." 

Worn since antiquity, the puttee was adopted as part of the service uniform of foot and mounted soldiers serving in British India during the second half of the nineteenth century. In its original form the puttee comprised long strips of cloth worn as a tribal legging in the Himalayas. The British Indian Army found this garment to be both comfortable and inexpensive, although it was considered to lack the smartness of the gaiter previously worn." (wikipedia)

• 37A: Instrument depicted in paintings by Hals and Caravaggio (LUTE) — picture me just sitting on "L--E" waiting for a letter to come along and make the LUTE v. LYRE decision. Because that's what happened. Thank god STUPOR came along to help me (though ... I could've used a less depressing clue on STUPOR (29D: A heavy drinker may be found in one))

• 39A: Use for a yew (HEDGE) — first read "use" as a verb, not a noun, which was very confusing. 
• 27D: "Divergent" author Veronica (ROTH) — a real live-by-the-name / die-by-the-name kind of day. Never going to remember this author's name. I've tried. It just won't take. Whereas SOLANGE and Hermann HESSE and good ol' Pauline KAEL and LON Chaney and Michael CERA were real helpers today. So I guess I came out on the right side of the proper noun divide today. Mostly. But you don't tend to feel the ones you know, only the ones you don't. Only takes one mystery name to grind you to a halt.
• 45D: The Hornets, on a scoreboard (CHA) — not a great answer (CHA = Charlotte, btw—they're an NBA team), but I do have to thank the Hornets for helping me see quickly that TOENAIL CLIPPERS was wrong. You might say the Hornets beat the Clippers. You might. If you enjoy very mild NBA word play, you might. You don't have to. It's probably not the greatest idea. But you might, is my only point, really. You might say it. 

[Couldn't find any clips of Hornets beating Clippers, so here's Clippers beating Hornets, back in January]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Derisive term for unattractive public sculptures / FRI 2-6-26 / Classic mixed drink developed in Singapore / "Hearts are ___ for the breakin'" (Taylor Swift lyric) / Dwelling that epitomizes simple living / Phenomenon through which luxuries become necessities / Home improvement site, after a 2021 rebranding / Simone Biles or Tom Brady, acronymically / Stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang / Finishes a season, say

Constructor: Geoffrey Schorkopf and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TINY HOME (35D: Dwelling that epitomizes simple living) —

The tiny-house movement (also known as the small house movement) is an architectural and social movement promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces. Tiny homes have been promoted as offering lower-cost and sometimes eco-friendly features within the housing market, and they have also been promoted a housing option for homeless individuals.However, the lack of clearly defined features and legality in many cases can cause issues for ownership, including being more expensive for the amount of area, vulnerability to natural disaster, lack of storage, difficulty hosting, smaller or lacking traditional home appliances, and legal and or zoning issues.

There is some variation in defining a tiny home, but there are examples and they are usually based on floorspace. However, tiny homes do not have clearly defined features and may be mobile and may or may not have traditional home features. One definition, according to the International Residential Code, a tiny house's floorspace is no larger than 400 square feet (37 m²). In common language a tiny house and related movement can be larger than 400 ft² and Merriam-Webster says they can be up to 500 ft² . One architectural firm used a threshold of 600 ft² to define a tiny home. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's lots to like in this, but there is a largeish rectangular patch in the NW that ended up being both ugly and alien to me. And hard. Harder than the rest, anyway. The rectangle is bordered on the south by HARD HAT (32A: Mason, e.g.) and on the east by GIN SLING (8D: Classic mixed drink developed in Singapore). Actually, it's half that rectangle. It's more of a triangle, with the three points being the "H" in HARD HAT and the "G"s at the front and back of GIN SLING. Everything inside that triangle (roughly) was a (tiny) nightmare for me. The epicenter of the nightmare was the completely off-putting (and completely unknown to me) PLOP ART (7D: Derisive term for unattractive public sculptures). It's like a bird shit all over the puzzle. At least, I'm assuming that's what the "plop" part of PLOP ART refers to, right? Bird shit? Don't birds shit on all public art, not just the sculptures you think are "unattractive?" I get that it's playing on the term "pop art," but the shittiness of "plop" is ICK on every level. [wikipedia says that the "plop" part refers to sculpture that seems to have been "plopped" thoughtlessly where it lies, but wikipedia also says the term PLOP ART "holds connotations to excrement"]. I was left wondering what horrid, rotting wordlist that answer crawled out from under. 

That second "P" in PLOP ART took forever, because ...  well, primarily because of WRAPS (20A: Finishes a season). I had no idea what sense of "finishes" (or "season") the clue wanted, and was getting no help from 1, 2, 3 of the crosses. PLOP ART, obvs, no help. Then there's the "Taylor Swift lyric." God knows I have been more than accommodating to the general enSwiftification of the puzzle over the past decade or so, but you're not even giving me the song titles now? Just ... "Taylor Swift lyric?" Are hearts HERE for the breakin'? HELD for the breakin'? I don't know. In retrospect, HERS seems obvious, but while solving, no, that was not the case. The last answer keeping WRAPS from going in was GPS WATCH. I had the GPS, but ... I didn't even know GPS WATCH was a thing, so I was stuck. I also don't really get what "word play" is supposed to be happening in the clue (5D: What gives you the time and place?). Is that just a straightforward question? I've heard people say "name the time and place" or something like that, but the phrasing here evokes nothing very clear. So, yeah, now that I've written this out, the real killer for me in the NW was WRAPS—an answer I'm not actually mad at at all. But its vagueness made GPS WATCH, HERS, and PLOP ART (none of them appealing to me) tough for me to come up with.

GIN SLING was easy but clanked a bit in my ears. I know the SINGAPORE SLING. In fact, that's the only way I got SLING—by inferring it from the "Singapore" in the clue. SINGAPORE SLING would be a great answer. GIN SLING ... fine, but less great. As for HARD HAT, somehow in my head a "Mason" is either really old-timey (laying bricks and mortar with a trowel in, like, Dickensian times) or else belongs to a secret society. I don't picture him (or her, but in my mind's eye, def him) with a HARD HAT at all, and then there's the fact that I haven't heard a person referred to as a HARD HAT in I don't know how long. But yeah, def. 1b. at merriam-webster dot com = "construction worker." Anyway, getting from the clue to the answer there, rough for me. Once I exit that HARD HAT / GIN SLING Bermuda Triangle, though, things get a lot cleaner and more entertaining. IT'S A SMALL WORLD is solid, as is the bank of 8s it runs into (CONTRACT / TOTAL LIE  / STOP DEAD) (those last two aren't just solid, they're strong). I love the highs and lows of modern living represented by the crossing answers TINY HOME (35D: Dwelling that epitomizes simple living) and LIFESTYLE CREEP (49A: Phenomenon through which luxuries become necessities). Real yin/yang action there. "I don't need much" vs. "I need I need I need." Good stuff. BOSS BATTLE is boring and by now old (used four times already in the 2020s, including once just six weeks ago, by one of these same constructors (?!)), but "I'M SO SCARED" made me laugh (it could use and "ooh" on the front in order to be fully sarcastic, but I still like it). The SW corner is as solid as its NE counterpart. A real joy to move through about 3/4 of this puzzle. It's only the stuff ... emanating ... from PLOP ART that made me at all unhappy. 

Bullets:

• 59A: Home improvement site, after a 2021 rebranding (ANGI) — seen this before and am never gonna like it. Feels like the puzzle's doing PR work on this "rebranding." The site used to be "Angie's List." Now it's this awful adspeak / app-ified four-letter nightmare that evokes angina and angioplasty more than home improvement, imho. It's neo-crosswordese to me and I hate it.
• 56A: Simone Biles or Tom Brady, acronymically (G.O.A.T.) — Greatest Of All Time. I think it's weird to just state it as fact that the acronym applies. A "to some," is probably in order. This is esp. true with Tom Brady (I think Biles is pretty objectively the greatest to ever do it).

• 21D: Parliament constituent (OWL) — the collective term for OWLs is a "parliament." Because I studied Middle English literature in grad school, I knew Chaucer's poem Parlement of Foules (i.e. "Parliament of Fowls") before I ever knew the term "parliament" applied specifically to OWLs. Fun (and semi-timely) fact: Parlement of Foules is the likely origin of the association of St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14) with lovers. 

The Parlement of Foules (modernized: Parliament of Fowls), also called the Parlement of Briddes (Parliament of Birds) or the Assemble of Foules (Assembly of Fowls), is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s–1400) made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem, which is in the form of a dream vision in rhyme royal stanza, contains one of the earliest references to the idea that St. Valentine's Day is a special day for lovers.

Oruch's survey of the literature finds no association between Valentine and romance prior to Chaucer. He concludes that Chaucer is likely to be "the original mythmaker in this instance." (wikipedia) 

• 23D: Entered a bear market (SLID) — first thought: "Ew, why are you going to a bear market, why are they selling bears, what do you need a bear for, bears should be free!" Then I thought of the stock market. And wrote in SOLD.
• 44D: Stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang (PSY) — as far as I know, PSY is known in this country for precisely one song ("Gangnam Style"), which was indeed mmmmmaaaaaasssssssiiiiiiivvvvve ... in 2012. Since 2012, I have thought about PSY and that song only when crosswords have forced me to.

• 51D: Modern name of the first National League champions (1876) (CUBS) — in 1876 they were the White Stockings. When they became the CUBS (around the turn of the (20th) century), the name "White Stockings" was adopted by the new American League team on the South Side of Chicago—this team became the modern Chicago White Sox.

[37D: Bring three suitcases to a weekend trip, say]

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. my bird-of-the-day calendar has entered the crossword chat

[OWLs … and they’re URAL (4)!]

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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